Creation Stories & Origin Myths

A Gathering of Ancient Stories, with a Preface on the Great Catastrophe

No one knows just how the story of Raven really begins, so each starts from the point where he does know it. — Dekinā'k of the Box House people, Sitka, Alaska, recorded 1908

The World That Ended

Somewhere between twelve and thirteen thousand years ago, the sky caught fire. What happened exactly remains one of the great debates of modern science. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis proposes that one or more fragments of a comet struck or detonated over the Laurentide Ice Sheet that blanketed much of North America.

Not everyone accepts the hypothesis. Critics note the absence of confirmed craters and point to terrestrial explanations. The scientific debate continues. But what is not in dispute is this: something catastrophic happened to the world at the end of the Pleistocene, the great ice age animals vanished, and the human survivors of that world carried the memory of what they had witnessed into everything they built afterward.

They carried it, most of all, into story. Flood narratives exist in the oral traditions of nearly every culture on earth. The Alaska Native peoples are no different. Their creation stories are among the most ancient continuous oral traditions on earth. Read them not merely as mythology. Read them as dispatches from the end of a world.

Every Alaska Native culture holds sacred narratives explaining the origins of the world, humanity, and their relationship to the land. These stories, passed down through countless generations, carry profound spiritual and cultural significance.

A Pan-Alaskan Tradition

The Turtle Clan

The Great Waters and the Sacred Shell — how the turtle saved the world from the flood

The Tlingit — Southeastern Alaska Panhandle

How Raven Brought Light

When darkness covered the world after the flood, Raven stole the sun from a rich old man and brought light to all creation

The Yup'ik — Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and Western Alaska

Raven and the First Human

How Raven found a man growing in a beach pea pod and shaped a woman from clay to keep him company

The Iñupiaq — Northern and Northwestern Alaska

Origin of Light

When only darkness existed, light and darkness argued until the first dim glow spread across the world

The Haida — Southeast Alaska and Haida Gwaii

Raven Opens the Clamshell

After the great water receded, Raven found the first people hiding in a clamshell on the beach

The Tsimshian — Southeast Alaska and British Columbia

The Beginning of the World

How the waters withdrew and carved the rivers, and Raven made the world habitable through transformation

The Eyak — Copper River Delta and Prince William Sound

Raven Steals the Sun

The sun was absent from the world until Raven stole it from a house at the edge of the sky

The Athabascan — Interior Alaska

Raven Steals the Light

In the great cold and hunger of the interior, Raven brought light because he could not stop meddling

The Alutiiq / Sugpiaq — Kodiak Island and Gulf of Alaska

The Powerful Old Man of Chilkak

An old man shaped people from earth and taught them the language of ocean swells and birds

The Aleut / Unangan — The Aleutian Island Chain

Raven and the Grandmother

Raven and his grandmother shaped the imperfect, beautiful world through their eternal argument

The Inuit / Inupiaq — The Arctic Coast

Sedna, the Sea Mother

How Sedna became the ocean's ruler and all marine life originated from her sacrifice

The Siberian Yupik — St. Lawrence Island and Diomede Islands

When the World Was Water

A great creature raised its back from the sea floor and the first land appeared above the waters